Financial Services and Markets Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Committee stage
Monday 13th March 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to offer Green support for this amendment and to agree entirely with everything that has been said thus far. I feel a sense of déjà vu all over again. I was just looking back at the comments I made in 2021, when, it is worth noting for the record, this issue of mortgage prisoners went to ping-pong: the House of Lords passed an amendment, and it went back and forth between the two Houses. Back then, we were talking about people suffering under high rates of 4% or 5%, and some were suffering with the vulture funds of 9%. As we have heard set out clearly, the situation has not improved but has got much worse, and we also have a cost of living crisis.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, noted that Martin Lewis is now involved in this, with his crucial supporting research. What a state our country is in when everyone can feel a great sense of relief and hope because someone who is, after all, only a private individual has stepped in where Parliament has failed. Surely this is the stage where Parliament—or the Government—can step up and rescue people trapped in often terrible situations through no fault of their own.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, I recall our debates on this subject in 2021. Indeed, I think the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has tabled is word for word the amendment he tabled on Report during the passage of what became the Financial Services Act 2021. It will not surprise the noble Lord that familiarity with it has not made me any warmer to the amendment.

As the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, reminded us, mortgage prisoners derive from lending practices before the financial crisis. These mortgage borrowers were much more likely to have got a mortgage without proof of income or with an impaired credit history. They still have relatively high loan-to-value ratios, and they often have unsecured debt as well. Many of them have interest-only mortgages, with no repayment plan. Put simply, they typically have higher-risk characteristics than borrowers with active lenders.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has correctly excluded 50,000 or so of the population of mortgage prisoners from his amendment, because they are in arrears or within the last 12 months of their mortgage term, but I think he intends the remaining 143,000 to benefit from the largesse provided by this amendment. This is notwithstanding that the FCA estimates that 66,000 of them could, in fact, switch to active lenders because the active lenders in the market have changed their risk appetite, with the encouragement of the FCA, and they would now be able to remortgage. I do not believe that it is right to legislate to give preferential financial terms to those who choose not to take advantage of the opportunities available to them in the market.

The FCA’s last review found that around 30,000 of the remaining 47,000 would be unlikely to benefit from switching, because if they did find a deal it would cost them more than the interest rates that they are currently paying. High-risk borrowers do not get the best rates in the market, however much they might wish to. Amendment 197 would give these borrowers a rate that did not reflect the market for them, and I do not believe that it is fair to give them a special advantage by legislating for them.

The FCA has proposed some practical steps to assist the remaining population, but it does not propose anything like that which is contained in Amendment 197. That is not surprising because the LSE in its earlier, independent study—I have yet to see the study that the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, referred to—concluded that market interventions were not justified and could cause markets harms.

We all have sympathy for those stuck with debt that they struggle to afford, but the problem is not confined to mortgage prisoners, and it is just not fair to single out this group of problem borrowers for special treatment. It is also an extraordinary departure from regulatory norms. The FCA does not tell lenders to whom they must lend money; that is not how regulation works. Under this amendment, the FCA would be telling lenders what their risk appetite should be, which raises big issues of moral hazard and fails to deal with the prudential consequences in terms of capital, on which the PRA is the arbiter.

Furthermore, the FCA is required to set interest rate caps, but only by reference to LTVs. This ignores the other key driver of interest rates—namely, the credit risk of the borrower. Whatever rate the FCA comes up with, it will be the wrong answer for some borrowers, and it would be plainly unfair if the FCA set the rate assuming high credit quality, because that is very likely to be at odds with the facts. In addition, requiring the standard variable rates to be no more than two percentage points above base rate ignores any evidence about the correct uplift for the particular type of loan and borrower characteristics, which can produce outcomes that do not reflect objective market realities. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, does not pursue this amendment, as he did in the 2021 Bill; it really does not make sense.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 415 and 419 in this group. In addition, I will speak to Amendment 417, which is in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan but originated as an amendment tabled by my noble friend the Minister.

Amendments 415 and 419 are somewhat narrower than the other amendments in the group, which the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has spoken to. They simply probe how the Bill has been drafted in relation to the term “conflict of interest”. Under Clause 75 contracting authorities have a duty to mitigate conflicts of interest, and under Clause 76 they are required to carry out conflict assessments. In each case, the clauses define the term “conflict of interest” by reference to Clause 74. Under Clause 74(2), a conflict of interest exists if someone has a conflict of interest—hence the Bill basically says that the definition of a conflict of interest is that it is a conflict of interest, which is not entirely helpful.

While “interest” is defined in Clause 74, “conflict” is not. Clause 74 says who might have a conflict but not what a conflict actually is. Is it an objective test or can conflicts include subjective perception? Does it have to be an actual conflict or just a possible one? Clause 74 is no help whatever. Clauses 75 and 76 have tried to define “conflict of interest” by reference to Clause 74, but in doing so they have merely highlighted that there is no definition in that clause. I have not attempted to define the term myself as my amendments today are obviously probing ones, but some attention needs to be paid to the drafting.

Amendment 417 would delete Clause 76(4), which deals with conflict of interest assessments. Subsection (4) takes the contracting authorities into the realms of fantasy. They have to think about what they know that might cause “a reasonable person” wrongly to think that there are actual or potential conflicts of interest. It is often hard enough to identify the range of potential conflicts of interest; getting into the territory of trying to work out what a so-called “reasonable person” might wrongly think is a potential conflict of interest is mind-blowing.

Having worked out what this reasonable person wrongly thinks, the contracting authority must take steps to demonstrate that the imagined wrong thought by the imagined reasonable person does not in fact exist. This is beyond parody. For good measure, there is no definition of “reasonable person”. We do not know whether this reasonable person is assumed to have any knowledge of public procurement or the workings of contracting authorities. Those of us who live in the world of politics know that otherwise reasonable people often believe extraordinary things and their capacity for thinking extraordinary things wrongly is infinite.

I very much look forward to hearing how my noble friend the Minister will defend subsection (4).

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and congratulate her on the first half of her contribution, which clearly identified a crucial problem that has undoubtedly been missed by numerous other eyes.

However, I entirely disagree with the second part of her contribution, which referred to Clause 76(4). I do not often find myself in the position of defending what is potentially the Government’s position—perhaps I am about to pre-empt entirely what the Minister is about to say—but subsection (4) says:

“If a contracting authority is aware of circumstances”.


It does not say, “We expect the contracting authority to be clairvoyant and know of every single circumstance where a reasonable person might”. We all know this. Think about local councils. Having been a local journalist on another continent, I think of a case where a large city authority kept commissioning a certain architect to do a whole series of projects. That ended up raising considerable public concern. If that is happening, noble Lords can see why it would make sense to pre-empt the explanation of why there is no conflict of interest and therefore no problem here. It is also worth pointing out that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said that this was a subjective judgment that would affect the letting of the contract. In fact, it would not; it just says that there must be details of the steps included. So I would defend Clause 76(4), if the Government feel that it needs to be defended.

Before I get to what I chiefly want to say, I want to apologise briefly. I attached my name to a number of amendments in the previous group; I meant to be here to speak to them but events unfortunately intervened and I could not be. I still stand behind them.

Coming to this group, I have attached my name to a number of amendments in various combinations of the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Scriven, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, clearly outlined—I will not go over the same ground—the Boardman review reported in May 2021, which has allowed plenty of time for this issue to be included in this Bill, despite all the hurry and rush that we know there has been around it. I would also point out something that the noble Lord did not say: when the Boardman report came out, the Government said, “We accept all of these recommendations”. If the Government have accepted them, they should surely be incorporated in this Bill.

I want to pick up on one amendment that I did not sign, although I would have had I noticed it: Amendment 413 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that

“a donation or loan of more than £7,500 to any political party in a calendar year”

should be declared. We are talking about transparency and trust. This is obviously a practical, simple step that would not be very hard to implement and would be well worth while.

Amendments 421 to 423 are about preventing undue influence. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I shall concentrate on Amendment 423. There is huge public concern about the revolving door, and I note that my honourable friend in the other place, Caroline Lucas, has done a huge amount of work, dating back in Hansard to at least 2013, on the revolving door in the defence and energy sectors.

That concern is not restricted to the Green Party. I was just looking through some of the reports. In 2011, Transparency International UK issued a press release headed

“Revolving door between Government and business is ‘spinning out of control’”.

If it was spinning out of control in 2011, we are at jet engine speeds by this stage. In 2016, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, in a report entitled Redefining Corruption, said that the public want a ban on the revolving door. This amendment provides much less than a ban; it is a modest six months, and I am not altogether sure that it should not be longer, but there is certainly great public concern about this. In 2017, the Committee on Standards in Public Life expressed concern about the revolving door.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, set out one disturbing case. Here is another. In 2020, We Own It highlighted the interaction between Serco and NHS Test and Trace, and the degree to which there has been a revolving door between Serco and the senior Civil Service, to the point where a former head of public affairs of Serco became a Health Minister—I am not sure how many Health Ministers back, but at some point, anyway.

Finally, we should not forget the Greensill scandal. Just look at the mess that arose in part because of a revolving door—indeed, in some cases people were stuck in the same door at the same time, apparently representing both private interests and public, government interests. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments noted that there were thousands of potential cases, but initially looked at only 108. There is lots of discussion about limits to that committee’s power; it cannot possibly cover this issue. We must start from the other side of the contracts.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Committee stage
Monday 24th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe to her new position. As she knows, she and I share many views on the Bill; indeed, we supported each other’s amendments. I fully endorse the quotation read out earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Fox; I hope that my noble friend will stick to it.

Amendment 534 is in my name; my noble friend had added her name to it, and it was debated during an earlier sitting of the Committee. It asked for a report on procurement rules, specifically around simplification and SMEs. My noble friend will be aware that, obviously, it has not yet been moved because it is low down on the list. While she has now removed her name, about which I am distraught, I hope that, when we get to that part of the Marshalled List, we might have a more favourable response from the Government Benches.

I have three amendments in this group: Amendments 323, 326 and 327. They are probing amendments relating to some of the discretionary grounds for exclusion in Schedule 7. The mandatory exclusion grounds in Schedule 6 are all based on objective facts—mainly whether various offences have been committed. The discretionary grounds in Schedule 7 are a mix of subjective and objective tests. My amendments are designed to probe this. I could have tabled more amendments to the schedule, because other paragraphs in it also use subjective tests, but I chose paragraphs 8, 9 and 11 as examples of the issue that I wished to debate.

In each of these paragraphs, the test is whether a decision-maker considers that a supplier has done something. To take the example of paragraph 8, the ground is that the decision-maker considers that the supplier or a connected person has infringed a bit of UK competition law, or an overseas equivalent. I do not understand why all these matters covered by the paragraphs cannot be dealt with by objective tests, as are used in Schedule 6. Surely an infringement of competition law can be objectively determined and ought not to be left to the opinion of a procurement official. Can the Minister explain why the Bill uses subjective tests rather than objective ones for these paragraphs?

My amendments are rather more modest than replacing these provisions with objective tests but they seek to strengthen the nature of the subjective test from “considers” to “is confident”. I chose that wording to align with what is in the Explanatory Notes, which explain the paragraphs in Schedule 7. I suggest that, if a subjective test is to be used in Schedule 7, the hurdle should be set at a fairly high level. My amendment might not be the right one but it is there to probe the language of the Bill. I am aware that Clause 55 gives some opportunity for suppliers to push back on decisions by contracting authorities but, at the end of the day, judicial review is the only real remedy available to a supplier who feels that they have been badly treated by the terms of this Bill. As we know, judicial review is a very unwieldy remedy and, frankly, is not available at all for SMEs in practical terms.

I also note that, in paragraph 15, which deals with national security, the decision-maker has to determine whether there is a threat to national security. When my noble friend winds up, would she please explain the difference between “determines”, which is used in paragraph 15, and “considers”, which is used throughout the rest of the schedule?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with great pleasure, following the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, to agree with everything that all of them said. I am going to be quite brief but I have three points to make. I will speak chiefly to Amendment 177, to which I have attached my name—as have the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Hendy—but I also want to comment on a couple of other amendments in this group.

I join others in welcoming the Minister to her new post. Is it not good to have some certainty in politics? At least we have the certainty that the Procurement Bill will come round again, whatever else we might be doing or facing in other parts of the Westminster system.

There is a phrase about the certainty of death and taxes, except of course we know that taxes are not a certainty for many of the companies now operating in the UK or collecting many government contracts. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, referred to one of those companies in particular—a company that I describe as the great parasite. It does not pay its workers very well, which relates to another amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hendy—we will get to that later—and it pays little or no tax in the UK.

There is a specific point to be made here. I am sure the Government would say that they want to see government and official money being spent well. However, the Tax Justice Network has noted, in looking at definitions of tax havens, that another term for them is secrecy jurisdictions. When companies operate out of tax havens, it is extremely difficult to see what is happening with their money and how they are operating; of course, they are not paying for the facilities and services they need to run their business and make their profits. In thinking about the great parasite, the example I often give when talking to schools, colleges and community groups is this: “Imagine the road outside. Think of all the lorries that have been carrying Amazon parcels up and down it today. Who is paying for that road? All of us in this room are, but Amazon is not”. If the Government are concerned about value for money and transparency in government procurement, Amendment 177 and the associated Amendment 180 are absolutely essential additions to this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 236 in this group. It probes the relationship between direct contract awards and framework contracts.

Direct awards are allowed under Clause 40 if they satisfy one of the justifications in Schedule 5, paragraph 8 of which allows them if they are similar to existing contracts for goods and services that have been entered into in the previous five years and in which the initial tender set out the intention to use the direct award justification. My amendment would change those five years to four years, specifically to probe the differences between a repeat direct award under Clause 40 and an award under a framework contract, as covered in Chapter 4 of Part 3.

Clause 45 says that a framework contract has a maximum duration of four years other than for defence and utilities contracts. Doubtless this is my ignorance speaking but I hope that my noble friend the Minister can explain to me the rationale for allowing five years for direct awards under Chapter 3 as opposed to four years for framework contracts under Chapter 4. My question is pretty simple: is there a substantive distinction between direct awards and awards under framework contracts, where the justification for the direct award is in paragraph 8 of Schedule 5?

It seems to me that this is another example of how the designers of this new procurement system have lost sight of simplicity and underlying principles in designing the system. However, there may be a good reason for that, of course; I look forward to my noble friend the Minister explaining it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly on Amendment 240 in particular, to which I would have attached my name had I noticed it in time. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. What he set out in terms of the problems of framework agreements are the kind of things we often encounter in the pages of Private Eye; it really is time that we saw some action on this issue.

Amendment 240

“is intended to prevent the future use of ‘VIP lanes’ for public contracts.”

I rather suspect that the nation out there, which is exhausted by politics, is probably not glued to your Lordships’ Grand Committee on the Procurement Bill this evening. I looked up the schedule: people are probably watching either “The Simpsons” or “Britain’s Parking Hell”. However, I know from what I get in my mailbag and what I see on social media that what happened during Covid with VIP lanes is a huge, continuing concern among large numbers of the British public. It was only last month that the Government were forced to admit that 50 firms had been put into the priority lane for test and trace contracts, worth billions. They included Immensa, a firm that was subsequently at the heart of more than 43,000 false negative results and had been incorporated only in May 2020. This came after the Good Law Project successfully challenged the Government’s VIP lane for personal protective equipment contracts.

So we have a situation where people are now looking at politics and saying, “We want to see things done differently”. This small, modest amendment would set a marker for achieving that; I feel that it deserves more attention both in this Room and outside it.

UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Tuesday 14th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

I thank the noble Lord for his support for my somewhat unintended amendment.

We come back to: what is this bank for and what is the economy for? The bank is supposed to serve the people of this land. The departments that focus on the people and the climate emergency this bank is serving should surely have an explicit statutory role in oversight. I have not been in your Lordships’ House that long, and I cannot count the number of times I have seen a Minister stand at the Dispatch Box and say in response to a question, “Well, I’d love to do that, but the Treasury —” and roll their eyes. That is the way the country is being run, and it needs to change. This could be a small way to step in that direction.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, support a separate Department of Energy and Climate Change, but for a slightly different reason because I think we would then allow BEIS to focus on what it should be doing, which is supporting British industry, productivity and growth in the economy without being distracted by a lot of other stuff.

I want to pick up the point about the extent to which the framework document should be reflected in the Bill. It is quite normal for public sector bodies to have framework documents—they are often called a memorandum of understanding—by their side. That has not been invented just for this organisation. They usually contain a lot of really quite mundane stuff such as following the Green Book and Managing Public Money and a lot of detail about interactions between the sponsoring department and the body. This framework document in many ways goes beyond what you would normally expect to find in such a document, which is why I and others are querying where the balance should be, but I do not think we should look towards importing the whole of the framework document into the Bill or having some kind of approval process because much of it will deal with rather mundane, day-to-day stuff. The problem here is that this framework document has got rather grand and includes things that ought to be within Parliament’s purview. I am sure we will be taking this area forward, and I hope we will have a bit of balance and perspective about ensuring that we do not have statutory overreach.

Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

The world has changed very considerably in the past half a century.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the noble Baroness concede that this House and the other place have changed very little in the 100 years since women got the vote in the way we operate at Westminster?

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

That is an entirely irrelevant observation, if I may say so.

I have heard many noble Lords say that this is a solution to a problem that does not exist, but I believe that that is looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. I invite noble Lords to read my noble friend Lord Pickles’s report on election fraud, which was published after the disgraceful events at Tower Hamlets. He found that there were risks of electoral fraud in our current system. The fact that relatively few people have been convicted of election fraud is not the point. It is clear that there are real risks; we owe it to the electorate to minimise those risks.

I am astonished that noble Lords can oppose the simple concept of voter ID. As my noble friend Lord Hayward said, voter ID is required if you go to a Royal Mail depot, or indeed the Post Office, to collect a parcel. Let me give a more mundane example: last Friday, I collected a birthday cake from a supermarket and was required to show some ID. It is just part of the way we carry on our lives now. We require ID for all kinds of things. From my perspective, requiring voter ID is a reform that is long overdue.

It is also obvious that, if you go down the route of voter ID, the most secure way of proving identity is photo ID. That is why the Labour Party has required it at some of its conferences—unless the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, is going to countermand that, that is what I believe to be the case. If we go to a meeting at the MoD or the Bank of England, we have to show photo ID, because it is part of the way we live our lives now.

Financial Services Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

3rd reading & Report stage
Monday 19th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, before moving the amendment, I join the noble Earl, Lord Howe, the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, in expressing my sadness at the death of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I send my condolences to his family. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, was the first person to ask me a question while I was in the middle of delivering a speech in your Lordships’ House and did so in his characteristically kind and generous manner. It was a good lesson—perhaps intentionally so—for a newbie.

In light of our time-truncated debate in Committee, Amendment 36 in my name, also backed, kindly, by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, is a somewhat adapted version of the amendment that I presented there. It would create a UK equivalent of the EU’s Finance Watch. I have chosen at this time to use this name for clarity as well as pronounceability.

I really must thank the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, who made the case for this amendment—intentionally or not, I am not sure—in our previous session on Report. He suggested that there were flaws in my Amendment 37, criticisms with which I would not necessarily disagree. He said the amendment

“asks the FCA and the PRA to—to use a phrase that has become popular today—mark their own homework. They are not really the right people to assess themselves; there are plenty of research institutes around this country that do a first-class job of assessing exactly these issues. However, we have not brought them together very well.”—[Official Report, 14/4/21; cols. 1425-26.]

I highlight the last sentence in particular because bringing together expertise, knowledge and analysis is exactly what “UK Finance Watch” would be designed to achieve—to bring together the undoubtedly wide range of expertise around the country to provide independent technical advice to enable Members of your Lordships’ House and the other place to contribute to public debate.

I set out in Committee and in briefings circulated before the Committee debate a detailed explanation of what the comparable EU body has achieved, and I will not repeat that here; nor will I repeat comments I made then about the thinness of the scrutiny of this Bill by your Lordships’ House, except to repeat that that is not a criticism of those here but rather a call for many more Peers to be engaged. The financial sector impacts on every aspect of modern life. We live in a financialised society, whether it is hedge fund ownership of care homes, water supplies or the PFI contracts and their successors doing such damage to our schools and hospitals. Peers who are experts in these areas have interests in these areas and many other Peers from all aspects of society need to be engaged in debates on financial Bills. But that is clearly not customary and could easily be daunting.

However, there is a need for a co-ordinated independent source of information, expertise and detailed knowledge that can, in some way, match the lobbying firepower and influence. I have in mind here the position of remembrancer, to empower Peers concerned with every aspect of society in overseeing the impact of the financial services laws and regulations that are so crucial. This would help the House obtain the complete picture that I was calling for in the amendment last week.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for her comments in that debate. She said that

“one of the big questions that has never been answered is: how does our financial services industry impact on the real economy, in contrast to something much more circular within the financial services economy?”—[Official Report, 14/4/21; col. 1425.]

She has entirely identified what I was seeking to do with that amendment. This amendment would not, as drafted, achieve that aim, being focused on ensuring the quality and effectiveness of legislation and regulation. However, when I put the words of noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, together, if UK Finance Watch proved to be a network, a clearing house—as the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, suggested it could be in our debate in Committee on a similar amendment—of the information that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, referred to, then we would have made real progress in the oversight and public legislative understanding of what is currently a far too opaque and little-understood area. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans said earlier, we need far more people asking questions about the financial sector from the outside, but they need help to be able to do that effectively.

I feel that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, made the arguments for me but I note that Greensill is just the latest brand name for which the UK financial sector will be famous—or infamous. I hope this model being based on one in the EU does not prejudice noble Lords or, indeed, the Government against it. Being world leading surely means looking around the world, seeing best practice and copying it.

It is not my intention to divide the House on this amendment. The oversight and scrutiny of regulation and laws for our financial sector is clearly an ongoing debate of considerable concern to a wide range of Members of your Lordships’ House. I beg to move.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, we simply do not need another body set up to look at the financial services industry. It is already in effect a core function of the Treasury and if the Treasury thought that it needed some help in identifying the issues that the proposer of this amendment identifies, it does not need the cover of primary legislation to set one up. In addition, Parliament itself has always taken a keen interest in the financial services industry. The long-standing Treasury Select Committee of the other place examines regulators as well as key emerging themes in relation to financial services and your Lordships’ House has recently created an Industry and Regulators Committee, which is having its first meeting as we speak. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, my noble friend Lord Blackwell and I are members of the new committee. Therefore, it should not surprise the House if in due course there is a focus on matters relating to the financial services sector.

I suspect that the subtext of this amendment is a belief that the financial services sector is wicked and has a negative impact on the UK economy. I do not believe that belief is widely shared in your Lordships’ House. On the other hand, there are few—if any—Members of your Lordships’ House who think that the financial services sector is perfect, and that includes me. The important point is that we already have the scrutiny mechanisms that I have described to give a proper focus to the activities and the impact of the financial services sector. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that this amendment should not be pressed to a vote.

National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Committee stage & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, at Second Reading, I said that I felt that a lack of definition for national security was a problem, and I still feel uneasy about that. I understand the need for flexibility to take account of how threats evolve over time. My noble friend the Minister said at Second Reading that national security was not defined in other legislation, but I am not sure that is quite good enough, given that this legislation will have a particularly big impact on commercial transactions, and what the business sector needs is certainty. Other uses of the term have not had that sort of impact on business transactions. I completely understand the difficulties of definition—problems of being too restrictive or insufficiently comprehensive. I think Amendment 13, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is a better approach than Amendment 1 with its objective clause, but I am concerned that it may still carry some of the defects that I outlined when I spoke to Amendment 1.

The statement that the Secretary of State will make under Clause 3 will certainly help businesses and their advisers but, at the end of the day, national security is the big overarching concept in the Bill which is left without further detail. Several noble Lords have already referred to the letter from my noble friend the Minister to all Peers, which came out while he was speaking earlier. I have had an opportunity to have a quick look at it on my iPad, and I do not think that any Member of the Committee will find that it advances our consideration of the Bill this afternoon at all: it just says that there is a lot more work to do.

If there is no definition or further elaboration of what national security means in the context of the powers created in the Bill, the Government will be giving the courts a blank sheet of paper if, as is probably likely, at some stage a challenge to the use of the powers under the Bill is mounted in the courts. We must remember that we have an activist judiciary, especially over the road in the Supreme Court, and the Government really ought to be alert to that fact and try and proof legislation against what can be done there. I shall be listening very carefully to what my noble friend says are the reasons for leaving national security as such a completely open issue in the Bill, and I look forward to hearing his remarks.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I should perhaps begin by noting my position as the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, in opening this Committee, said that most of the amendments were seeking better to describe national security. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said that, without a definition, the Bill is missing a vital ingredient. It would indeed be interesting if, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, said, we were to continue to use the EU definition. My personal position is that we should keep as close to the EU as possible, but that has not seemed to be the Government’s position.

The noble Lord, Lord Fox, noted how successive Governments of different hues had taken a hands-off approach to mergers and acquisitions, those involving both national and international assets. We have had, to an extent matched by few other countries in the world, a “Robber barons welcome” sign out in the process of selling off the family silver in a veritable orgy of privatisation and financial isolation. That has clearly had an impact on public order and national security.

I will not let rip with a Second Reading speech—something that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, expressed concern about—but will point out that “have regard to” clauses are at the very core of democracy. If the Government are taking new or extending existing powers, for there to be democratic oversight there surely needs to be an outline of how those powers will be used, a legal framework against which a Government can be held to account, should they go off the rails. As the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, just said, that does not reflect an activist judiciary; rather, it is one doing its job and fulfilling its constitutional role.

We know that the Government do not like to have such oversight, both democratic and legal, but it is surely the responsibility of this Committee to attempt to insist on it—for nothing more than national security, because of the degree to which it was not secured by previous Governments, having been exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and imminently threatened by the climate emergency. I will address some of those national security concerns in my Amendment 93, which we will get to later, but I speak now on Amendment 13, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. I thank her for her clearly careful and detailed work on it. I will not address all its elements, but focus on a couple of paragraphs, particularly proposed new paragraph (b)(iv),

“enabling a hostile actor to … corrupt processes or systems”.

There is grave concern about the impact of big money on our quasi-democratic processes, particularly in the age of social media. These are so well known that I do not need to expound on them at length, but I will point to how the 2010 national security strategy already referred to such concerns, and they have obviously greatly grown since. Even in our conventional media, we have a quite astonishing concentration of media ownership, often foreign or offshore. That surely needs to be acknowledged as a national security concern. I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about how Amendment 2 seeks to address such issues.

I also point to proposed new paragraph (f) in Amendment 13, which is about

“the likely impact of the trigger event on the United Kingdom’s international interests and obligations, including compliance with legislation on modern slavery and compliance with the UN Genocide Convention”.

This has obviously been of great concern to your Lordships’ House; we reflect on the debate around the Trade Bill. These are surely national security concerns. They are not just moral issues, but of great effect to our national security. A stable world, in which no one is subject to genocide or held in slavery, is a world that is far more secure for every citizen of the UK and the nation as a whole.

I come to proposed new paragraph (g) on

“organised crime, money laundering and tax evasion”.

The security of funding for schools, hospitals, roads, police and all the other services on which we rely depends on companies in our society paying their taxes. When it comes to money laundering, we have seen, in many aspects of our society and internationally, the disastrous impact of dirty money—something that, in some societies around the world, has led to almost a total state breakdown.

Overall, having such a set of definitions, as many noble Lords have said, has been of help to the Government, giving the relevant Minister a list against which their decisions can be checked. Without such a list providing an explanation against its clauses, how can a Minister avoid accusations of corruption, malfeasance or simple neglect of duty?

I am pleased to attach my name to Amendment 83 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, also signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, which refers to the integrated defence review. It is a great pity that we are forced to debate the Bill without that. It is a situation in which we find ourselves in many areas of government work. The reasons for ensuring that we have a tight interlinking between the review and the Bill have been clearly outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, so I will not go into them further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, with whom I am often in agreement—although, I am afraid, not in this case.

In my little over a year in your Lordships’ House I have noticed a strong tendency for Members to sign up to speak on amendments that they support and not those that they oppose. However, this has a clear and damaging effect, and slants the debate. Proponents get to put their case and the Government attempt to bat it away, often on merely technical grounds, and only one side of the argument is put. That sets the tone of the debate beyond just that day; it unbalances it. There is also the issue that, on Bills such as this, as a noble Lord said earlier, we often have an accountant followed by a banker followed by a lawyer. That is not a representative sample of society or opinion. It is for that reason that I signed up to speak on the amendment and express my strong opposition. I will be brief but clear.

The earlier groups of amendments on which I spoke, including Amendment 2, sought to define the national security on which the Bill seeks to allow the Government to act. The amendment does the very opposite by seeking to restrict the Government’s hand. The former amendments were “have regard to” amendments. This is a “shall not be taken into account” amendment. It is extremely ideological and seeks to assert the primacy of the market and the interests of business—which, by definition, given the nature of the Bill, is almost certainly big business, giant multinational companies—over what might be regarded as a key concern of the Government regarding employment. That is also, I would strongly argue, a national security issue—certainly a public order issue—with regard to Amendment 2.

The market is a human creation, not some natural process or action such as photosynthesis or the tides. To say that the market should have primacy over the well-being of society is a profoundly ideological argument that would have been very strange for most of the 20th century and reflects a particular neoliberal political position. Again, we are back to talking about investor confidence and the idea that we have to be a competitive nation—the very ideology that led us to the 2007-08 financial crash.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I respect the opinions of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, but she will not be surprised to find that I do not agree with a single word of what she said. I agree with the sentiments behind Amendment 6, but I expect that the Minister will say that the amendment is unnecessary because the items listed in it could never be considered to be national security considerations. If I am correct in that assumption, I hope that he will make a very clear Dispatch Box statement to that effect, with no hedging about or qualification.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 14th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in favour of Motion F1 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. I thank him for his strong and determined pursuit on this issue over the many stages of this Bill. I join the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in hoping very much that we will see our Opposition Front Benches support this and push it forward.

I will refer to many of the same issues that I raised on Motion B; we are talking about local control and local prioritising, as the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Liddle, have said. Without this amendment, this Bill would take financial control away from the devolved Administrations—money is power, as we know. I think it was in Committee that I raised the phrase “pork barrelling”, which has reappeared again and again. This is heading towards an American-style politics, and we have many reasons why we would not wish to head in that direction.

This means in practice that if you have, as we do, an Administration in Westminster who are keen on building new roads—even though they just create more air pollution and new traffic—and airport expansion, and not on spending on nature, that priority will be forced on to local devolved Administrations.

I slightly disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, who held up as a model local enterprise partnerships and the previous model under the coalition Government; business and elected people is one partnership, but I would like to see something which is much broader and takes in all elements of the local community.

I have been seeing a great rise in enthusiasm across many parts of government for deliberative democracy, for the climate assembly and the people’s assembly approach—the chance to bring together representative groups of people to make decisions. Given that increase in enthusiasm, I would like to see it written into the Bill. Perhaps we will pursue it in the future.

I come back to my point from the debate on the previous amendment about the issue of coercive control raised by the Domestic Abuse Bill. That explicitly looks at financial control as a way in which people in households exercise unequal control. I hope that your Lordships’ House would agree that in an ideal household, everyone has a real and equal say in the spending of financial resources and a real chance to have their say. I would be interested in the noble and learned Lord’s comments on this; the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said that this was in consultation. I agree that we should have the word “consent” in this amendment. We are talking about democracy, about people having their say and about how we would like to see our nations run.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, when the Minister introduced the Motion, she explained clearly that the other place had claimed financial privilege and that it was customary for this House to respect that decision made by the Speaker. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said that this was not a financial issue. I respectfully say to the noble and learned Lord that it is not for this House to determine whether or not it is a financial issue. As I understand it, it has been accepted by this House for a very long time that the final arbiter of what is or is not a financial issue for which privilege can be claimed is the other place, through its Speaker. If we continue to disregard the Commons claim of financial privilege in relation to amendments we send to the other place for consideration, we not only show a lack of respect, particularly to the Speaker, but might be starting on a route to a constitutional clash with the other place, which would be most unfortunate.

When I sat where the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, sits, many years ago, we often faced financial privilege being invoked against amendments we were pleased with ourselves for having sent back to the other place for consideration, but we always respected that decision when it came back. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, will continue that tradition in this place. Does the Minister know of any precedence for this place insisting on its amendments not once but twice in the face of a financial privilege claim by the other place, and does she agree with me that this is not a path down which this House should go?

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 2nd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Hain. I agree with much of what they have said. The noble Baroness was particularly clear in setting out the issues that arise with this group. I have attached my name to, and will speak to, Amendments 119 and 126, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, who I thank for originating them.

They share the purpose of many amendments in this group: to ensure that the devolved nations have a voice in the operation of the internal market—the market that will govern much of what they can regulate and what protections they can provide to their peoples, as the Committee discussed last week in the group starting with Amendment 15.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has not yet spoken, I will briefly address the detail. I interpret Amendment 119 as something of a back-up to Amendment 118, which would ensure that the Government have to obtain the consent of devolved Administrations before appointing the chair and members of the CMA’s office for the internal market panel. Amendment 119 says “seek consent”. I prefer Amendment 118, but it is important that at this stage we offer a range of amendments to the Government.

Amendment 126 refers to the membership of the OIM panel, saying that it should include representatives from each of the four nations of the United Kingdom. The purpose of these two amendments, as in so many of the amendments in this group, is—to adapt the well-known phrase— to ensure that there is no regulation, or deregulation, without representation or democracy.

In briefly making the case for these amendments, I go back to the first group debated today, which, as your Lordships will recall, related to professional qualifications. I quote the words of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in that debate:

“There is the whole world of artificial intelligence or gene editing—there is a massive range of new and potential professional areas, bodies and qualifications that may come forward … in the case of new professions, it is entirely possible that the individual nations of the UK might seek to regulate them differently, and we want no new barriers to trade to emerge”.


In that one short statement, the Minister managed to sum up the disturbing intention of the Government to centralise in Westminster decision-making on extremely important areas of public policy that are currently devolved; the reasons for the objections to this Bill held by many, particularly those concerned with defending the devolution settlements; and the case for these amendments. Even if the protections that the still relatively new institutions of the nations have been able to create for their peoples stay in place, they will not be able to react to social, economic or technological changes, or strengthen existing protections.

To go back to the single-use plastics example that was discussed extensively under Amendment 15, if the Welsh Government want to provide extra protections for their people and environment from these deeply damaging products, they can rush to get measures under the wire now, before the internal market replaces the single one. For what happens after that, I cannot think of better examples than those provided by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan—gene editing and artificial intelligence, where different regulations might be applied by the devolved Administrations in their areas of competence. That would include areas ranging from agriculture to education, from food safety to transport. We need to ensure that the devolved Administrations can keep control.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I listened carefully to noble Lords who spoke before me. The devolved Administrations are failing to recognise that both the CMA and the office for the internal market are fundamentally UK-wide bodies working on UK-wide issues. They are not bodies where territorial interests will be played out. The devolved nations are part of the United Kingdom, which exists and is not just a federation of four independent nations. There are clear United Kingdom functions, which is why we have UK Ministers looking out for the interests of the whole United Kingdom. We should not regard the UK as somehow morphing into an equivalence with England, which the noble Lord, Lord Hain, came close to saying, even if he did not actually say it, when he spoke earlier.

Furthermore, these significant independent public bodies should not be seen as having nominees or representatives on them: it is important that you get the best people to contribute to the functions given to these bodies by statute. Those people will require qualifications and experience. It does not matter where they come from: the most important thing is to get the right quality of individual on those bodies to carry out their functions. Any sense that those individuals become the possessions of devolved Administrations could take them into political alignment, which would have a very negative influence on the effective operation of the independent bodies.

Schedule 3 already requires consultation with the devolved Administrations over the appointment of the chair and panel of the office for the internal market. That is the normal formulation. I do not think that there is a precedent for what is proposed, for example, in Amendment 117: direct appointments by devolved Administrations to independent UK-wide bodies. That would take us in a direction that could undermine the independence and coherence of those bodies. I hope that noble Lords will not pursue their amendments.

Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Noakes

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak only to Amendment 82 in this group. I generally try not to speak on matters about Northern Ireland, because life is too short.

I completely agree with what my noble friend Lord Lansley said on the trader support service. In particular, I am sure that, if there were a need for further support at the end of the two years, any responsible Government would ensure that such support was available. I remind noble Lords that it is a temporary facility in order to help traders become accustomed to the new arrangements, whatever they finally turn out to be. It includes training. It is not to take over from the traders handling the paperwork; it is to train them so that it becomes part of their everyday activities. In that context, two years may well still be enough, although I accept that there is uncertainty at the moment.

The amendment says that the service can be accessed at no cost—that is, of course, no cost to the trader, but there will be a cost to the public purse. I just say to noble Lords that, if they pass the amendment, they are walking straight into financial privilege.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I will be brief. The noble Lord, Lord Hain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, have outlined clearly the sad and urgent need for these amendments. I particularly commend the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, speaking from the heart from a lifetime of experience on the ground. Lives and businesses have been peacefully and productively intertwined between Northern Ireland and Ireland and must not be torn asunder.

It is a year since I came into your Lordships’ House. I did not appreciate then—although, in retrospect, perhaps I should have, given that it was just after the unlawful Prorogation of the other place—that in 12 months’ time I would have to join a broad coalition of fellow Peers speaking up simply for the rule of law, the Government having explicitly disavowed adherence to it.

We are daily reminded of the fragility, instability and weakness of our current institutional arrangements and the pressing need to make the UK a modern, functional democracy. I go back to a paper from the Constitution Society in 2019, which noted:

“We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be ‘good chaps’”.


The gendered nature of that phrase is telling but not my main point. The paper concludes that general standards of good behaviour among senior UK politicians can no longer be taken for granted.

Reflecting on the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that these amendments are unnecessary because they are already covered, my response would be that, on an issue of this importance, we need to seek every possible protective mechanism in these circumstances. That is the context in which these amendments come before us. The practical reality is that they create laws that then may well have to be enforced on the Government. I urge the proponents to pursue them to the utmost.